


The Quality of Mercy

by mab



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Season/Series 02, podperson darren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-09-18 17:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9396182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mab/pseuds/mab
Summary: Geoffrey thinks he makes a sound that means ‘leave me alone’ though it may very well be ‘I’m going to die’ or ‘I’m good with the floor.’





	

Geoffrey Tennant is going to die. At least it feels like it. He’s not sure how he feels about that. Death would suck, but his head would stop hurting, and that’s all he really wants at the moment. If that could happen through unconsciousness or death, Geoffrey’s not very picky right now. Not when it feels like his brain is soaked in gasoline, lit on fire, pressed through a vice and attempting to leak out his nose. 

He’d do something productive about his situation, but his first attempt at movement, when the aura of the migraine came on (during an argument with Oliver over fucking Macbeth, so maybe he missed a few signs through his rising blood pressure) ended with him where he is now: on the floor of his office, curled up in the fetal position, heals of his hands pressed tightly to his eyes. He hadn’t been able to see very well (or at all, really) and tripped over the visitor’s chair at his desk. After that, laying on the floor and riding out the pain (or dying, again he’s not feeling overly choosey in this moment), seemed to be the only option he had. 

At least Oliver had the decency to go away, after it became clear he had no way to help Geoffrey, and talking to him was not helpful at all. Or, if Oliver really was all in his head, then Geoffrey had lost the ability to conjure up the ghost while his brain liquefied. The level of pain was almost worth Oliver’s disappearance. Almost, but not quite. 

“Geoffrey!” A loud, loud, loud unwanted voice rings out, and throws open his office door at the same time. It opens three quarters of the way before smashing into the small of his back.

Geoffrey groans in response to the way the action jars his skull. He can’t even open his eyes, let alone roll over to look up at his visitor. He can’t even be upset that Darren fucking Nichols of all people is seeing him like this, curled up and maybe with a puddle of vomit not so far from his head. Okay, definitely a puddle of vomit (the action that finally made Oliver realize what was up and disappear to wherever he went when he wasn’t making Geoffrey look like a loon). 

“Lights!” Geoffrey hisses through clenched teeth. He wants the lights off. So he can die in the dark. 

“Geoffrey, I understand Macbeth isn’t going very well for you, but this is a bit dramatic darling.” Darren’s voice hasn’t dropped a decibel. It’s full of pompous gloating and Geoffrey risks a growl, low in his throat, but he sounds more like a mortally wounded asthmatic kitten than a lion. Even so, the vibration sets off another stab of pain through his skull and Geoffrey makes a sound that is not a whimper, it’s fucking _not_. 

“Unless you want to see the inside of my skull splattered around this room, shut the fuck up and shut the lights on the way out.” Geoffrey manages to get the words out through clenched teeth, each syllable one sending tendrils of fresh pain sparking through his skull. He can hardly breathe after, it hurts that much.

“Really, Geoffrey. I didn’t take you for a gun suicide. Leaves a terrible looking corpse.”

What? He doesn’t get it for a moment. Then he thinks about what he must look like: curled up on the floor of his office, cradling his head after a long, long shitty day of Henry fucking Breedlove disobeying his every direction, and Ellen giggling with him between scenes (likely fucking each other after rehearsals). He probably looks like he’s mid mental break. 

He doesn’t want to talk again, but manages to force out a few words: “Migraine. Shut the fucking lights,” and to his eternal, I’d much rather die now than admit I ever said this to fucking Darren, shame: “ _Please,_ Darren.”

Darren huffs. The lights snap off, Geoffrey swears he can hear the absence of them. His head feels no better. He thinks Darren leaves him, though the door remains against his back. With the light mostly gone, he moves his hands from his eyes to his hair, and twists his fingers, not surprised by the sweat that meets him, and no pulling on his hair does little more than mess it up further, but he needs some kind of control of his pain.

“Can you sit up?” Darren asks, surprising Geoffrey so much that he flinches at the man’s voice.

Can he sit up? Geoffrey doesn’t understand why that matters. He’s just going to lay right here until it passes or he dies. His migraines rarely last more than twelve hours. It’s fine. No need to get up. The floor is plenty comfortable. No, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t think he can sit up, thank you. 

His lack of response must be telling. A hand fists into the fabric at the back of his shoulder and heaves him up to a sitting position. His body reacts to said sitting position by forcefully heaving. Geoffrey manages to turn his head to the side, away from Darren, because even though he hates the man, vomiting on someone that is trying to help you (or kill you, Geoffrey’s not sure which way Darren is going here), is just rude. He manages to get one hand down on the ground to support himself as he heaves bile for entirely too long, his stomach empty already and cramping.

“Lovely,” Darren comments, thankfully under his breath. “Here. Take these.” 

Some automatic part of Geoffrey’s’ brain makes him crack his eyes open (the hall light is still on, so he regrets his choice immediately), and he keeps them long enough to see that Darren is holding a paper cup of water in one hand, the other a tight fist. And his face looks anything but amused at Geoffrey’s current state. That is good. Geoffrey closes his eyes again, the light too much, and opens his hand. He feels three pills drop into his open palm. His motion to pop them in his mouth is automatic and he swallows them dry.

“Animal.” Darren comments, but it’s still not a gloating tone that Geoffrey expects (okay, deserves) from the other man. Instead, he adds: “Drink some water. In the very least you’ll have something to vomit up.”

Again blind, Geoffrey takes the cup and drains it in two long gulps. The coolness of the water makes his headache spike again. He squeezes the cup in his hand, glad to feel something crunch, and starts to lay down again. 

Except Darren pulls at his shoulder again. “No, you can’t stay on the floor. You’re homeless and deranged, Geoffrey, not a drunk frat boy. You’re much too old to be sleeping on the floor next to a pool of vomit.”

Geoffrey thinks he makes a sound that means ‘leave me alone’ though it may very well be ‘I’m going to die’ or ‘I’m good with the floor.’ 

“I’ll help you to your closet,” Darren says. Somehow, his voice makes the statement seem anything but absurd and pathetic. He doesn’t even sound like he’s gloating over Geoffrey’s living arrangement. Someone has replaced Darren Nichols with a pod person.

It takes more of Darren’s help than he’d like to admit to get him off the floor. Geoffrey presses his fists to his eyes again, nails digging into his palms so deeply that they’ll bleed tonight and leave little half moon bruises tomorrow. The hall light is piercing through his skull. He’s half sure he’s got tears on his face from the pain – this may be the worst migraine he’s had since he came back to New Burbage. Then again, they always feel like the worst one.  
“Oh,” Darren says under his breath – a rarity, Darren likes all his words heard. There is the sound of ruffling, and then: “Move your hands.” 

Geoffrey does as told, too miserable to do anything else. Fabric, rough and thick presses against his face, and Darren actually has to guide one of his hands to hold it up before Geoffrey takes the hint and presses the scarf to help cover his eyes. 

He squints his eyes open, and there isn’t much light getting through the fabric. He closes his eyes all the same. It finally sinks in that Darren has given him one of his fucking ubiquitous scarfs to cover his eyes, after getting him medicine and helping him off the floor, and life is even more weird than it was two hours ago. Considering he spends most of his time fighting with a fucking ghost about Macbeth, that says a lot about this moment. 

“Wha..?” He starts to ask, but the effort to even finish the word is too much. 

Darren huffs another sigh, sounding more like himself when he speaks, though he keeps his voice closer to a whisper than his normal shouting to the back of the house voice, he says: “Even I can’t leave you writhing on the floor in pain. If you die who will sign my checks?”

Technically, Geoffrey doesn’t sign Darren’s checks, but it is not the time to point that out. Because if Darren lets go of him (oh yes, the smaller man is holding him up, something Geoffrey has only now come to realize), Geoffrey will just collapse down onto the floor to ride this out. Despite how awful it is, leaning on Darren, he must admit it is better than writhing on the floor. 

“Come on. Let’s get you to your closet,” Darren says, and pulls on his arm to get him walking.

Each step causes more agony, but he only makes a pathetic sound once or twice before he falls into the rhythm of it. Step, tense, ride out the pain, repeat. 

“Room. It’s a storage room.” He manages to force out the words between steps, in the moment of the pain to try and push it away. He’s not successful in that endeavor, but he does pull a laugh from Darren that doesn’t sound entirely smug.

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, darling.” And there, that’s sounding like the real Darren, not the bring out medicine and give you my scarf to hide behind pod person he’s with now.

Geoffrey can only manage a grunt in response. They move on in silence for a bit (no, not exact silence, every footfall sends waves through his skull), and if weren’t for the other’s hand gripping his upper arm, Geoffrey wouldn’t know he was there. He’s absurdly grateful not to be alone in this moment. 

“Stairs,” Darren warns, again, voice quieter than normal. He doesn’t even laugh at the sound Geoffrey makes at the thought of them, more whimper than a groan. 

“One at a time.” Darren suggest, and Geoffrey shuffles one foot down and then the other. It’s dizzying (even more than the throbbing of his brains liquefying), going down stairs without seeing them, or anything really. One hand leaves the scarf pressed to his face to reach for the banister, but that makes the scarf droop and all the light come searing in so bad that he feels his knees go weak.

Darren’s hand keeps him upright. “Stop. Breathe,” Darren whispers, actually whispers. “Hold the scarf, I won’t let you fall.” He says when Geoffrey is breathing evenly again.

That’s not a sentence he’s expected form someone who he as literally dueled with (twice!), nor is any of this really, so Geoffrey does the only thing he can, he lets go of the banister and rights the scarf, trusting Darren to get him to the bottom of the stairs.

They make it. By the time they’re shuffling through the door of the close—storage room, Geoffrey’s stomach feels weird, in a not unpleasant way, and it’s harder to lift his feet. His cheeks and lips feel numb. Darren guides him towards the couch. Geoffrey tries to lay down, once he feels it brush against his shins, but Darren holds him upright.

“You may want to remove your pants,” Darren says in the way he would advise someone to take an umbrella out into a hurricane. “You vomited on them,” Darren adds. “I’m not doing it. There are limits to my kindness.”  
Geoffrey would point out that he assumed they would have reached that limit the second Darren opened the door to his office, but really, they haven’t, so he can’t argue. He just blindly hands over the scarf and undoes his pants, only to nearly fall over when he tries to get them past his boots.

“I don’t know why you insist on wearing these monstrosities,” Darren says, and guides Geoffrey into sitting down.

Only after his hand is gone does Geoffrey realize what tether to the world it has been. He cracks open his eyes to see Darren squatting in front of him, working the laces of his boots open and pulling them off, as he speaks again: “Though really, you’ve never put much thought into any of your clothing choices, not even in university.”

Geoffrey can only hum an agreement. The moment his feet are freed, he shimmies his pants off the rest of the way and curls up on the couch, hands at his temples, though the pain is much better already. Darren actually drapes a blanket over him, which feels nice and heavy against his skin, weighing him in place as much as Darren’s hand had held him together moments before. 

“What did you give me?” he asks, a question one should ask before blindly swallowing pills. But maybe his time in the asylum made him too compliant in taking what he was told – once he had his head somewhat back together, it was clear that was the only way to get out of the hellhole, compliance disguised as healing.

“Two percocet and a valium. Should knock you out.”

That’s...a lot of drugs. It shouldn’t knock him out, it should knock him on his ass. Geoffrey hums again, thinking about it (well as much as his worn out and now drugged mind is willing to think), and then asks: “You have a valium prescription?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

Geoffrey laughs, which hurts despite the pills dissolving their way through his stomach.

“You’re lucky it’s Saturday night. No one will be around tomorrow. You should rest.” Darren says the last part like he knows Geoffrey won’t. His voice is further away, closer to the door. 

“Thank you, Darren,” Geoffrey calls, and while it hurts to project his voice enough, it doesn’t hurt saying the words he thought he’d never say without a heavy dose of sarcasm. That’s interesting.

There is silence for so long that Geoffrey thinks Darren is gone, but he never heard the door shut. He opens his eyes to see the man in question still standing by the door, looking for all the world like he has no idea what to say in response to an honest thank you from Geoffrey Tennant. Which is good, at least Darren is confusing himself along with Geoffrey.

“I’ll leave a note for Anna to come looking for you on Monday. Don’t die, you’ll smell terrible by then.”

And then the man is gone, shutting the door quieter than Darren has ever closed a door in his life. 

Geoffrey tugs the blanket around his shoulders, and settles in to ride out the rest of the migraine in a considerably better position than he was less than an hour before.

He’ll check Darren’s office for a pod in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I did a thing with a Shakespeare quote for the title. It comes from the line ' _The Quality of mercy is not strained_ ' spoken by Portia in The Merchant of Venice.


End file.
